Beware the night . . . One of the most literate and visually striking horror films of the 1930s, The Old Dark House
was directed by award-winning James Whale the year after he made the seminal Frankenstein, which
also starred Boris Karloff in his role as the Monster. An artful mixture of chills and exceedingly dry gallows
humour, The Old Dark House is directed with a wonderful sense of the eccentric and featured early roles for
the Oscar-winning Melvyn Douglas (Hud, Being There), Ernest Thesiger (The Bride of Frankenstein) and
Charles Laughton (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Private Life of Henry VIII for which he also won an Oscar).